Honour, pride, dignity?

As Yogi Adityanath goes on a spree of rechristening cities in Uttar Pradesh, one would think that all is well in the state, but for some aan, baan aur shaan matters. Just a couple of weeks ago, the UP Cabinet had approved the proposal to rename Allahabad as Prayagraj. The CM defended the name change as the undoing of the mistake committed by Mughal emperor Akbar in 1575, when he gave Prayag the moniker of Illahabad or ‘the abode of gods’. Little heed was paid to the sentiments that had come to be attached with ‘Allahabad’ in the nearly four and a half centuries since then.

A year earlier, Adityanath had rectified another ‘fault’ that had a connection with the Mughals. This time, it related to a railway station. Of course, the trick lay in tweaking the name. The historic Mughalsarai railway station would henceforth be known as Deen Dyal Upadhyay junction, he declared. Upadhyay, an RSS ideologue, had passed away mysteriously at the station in 1968. So what if Mughalsarai was one of the first few junctions of the region? Now, on Diwali eve, Yogi felt he owed his people a Diwali gift. What better than to change the name of Faizabad to Ayodhya! Then he went further. The honour of Lord Ram’s father’s name too needed to be restored. Simple: the district would have a medical college to be called after king Dashrath.

It would soon be known if these decisions are a fulfilment of the ‘wishes of the people’, as the CM has been claiming. Surely, the people are wise and not as naive as he would make one believe by his simple acts of renaming places. 2019 is just round the corner. It will be the time of reckoning. The more important issues of law and order, jobs, economy, farms, development, cleanliness, education and health will sweep away any other attempts camouflaged as ‘governance’. There is no prestige more than a life lived with dignity. It’s as simple as that.